This Week's Nominee
| | Our 2022 Community Partner
While the challenges continue, so do the good works done by our neighbors, our teachers, our health care providers, our volunteers and so many others. This is their story. Ledyard National Bank is proud to support the 2022 Hometown Heroes, who were nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Concord Monitor. Nominate your Hometown Hero Today. |
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| | Hometown Hero: Lori Garrett ~ MEETING UNIQUE NEEDS
By SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN
Monitor staff
Behind the metal racks stocked with canned food, dog treats and bags of fresh produce, Lori Garrett sits at her desk in the office of Warner Connects, a food pantry and community resource center, replying to emails to get started for the day. Garrett, the pantry’s founder and director, strives to make everyone who walks in feel welcome and her team of volunteers believes that no one else can do it as well as she can. |
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| “We meet the clients with compassion and understanding and help sort of guide them through the system and help them identify what programs they might qualify for,” said Garrett.
Prior to opening the food pantry in Warner, Garrett worked in a community-based mental health facility where she assisted people in navigating the system to get the services they needed.
An experience with one of her clients fueled her to start Warner Connects. On one occasion, she accompanied her client to a food pantry. After two hours of waiting with the client in line, Garrett said she returned with a bag of food and told her that she couldn’t eat it. It wasn’t that the food was awful, but food pantries and state and federal assistance food programs don’t match everyone’s dietary needs.
“You can’t feed people if they have significant health issues, like problems with chewing and swallowing or if they live in a place where they can’t cook,” Garrett said, explaining how Warner Connects was born out of community needs.
The pantry serves 13 towns in Merrimack County with more than just food. They have a wood bank, toys for children and even coats to donate for the winter.
Garrett’s days at the pantry are never the same. There are times when everyone who walks has the same needs or a variety of needs. On a few occasions, there are usually people waiting for her in the parking lot before she even gets to the pantry. Apart from assisting her clients, she attends Zoom meetings, prepares reports, checks her messages, organizes deliveries and pickups, and does a variety of other tasks.
“I try to cram as much as I can until I can’t do anymore,” said Garrett. “Then, I go home and do it over the next day.”
Garrett and the volunteers at the pantry go the extra mile to ensure people in the community are doing okay. While delivering food, they check in on their clients to see if they are in good health or if they require anything.
Susan Morrison, the pantry’s volunteer coordinator, has worked with Garrett since Warner Connects began. She said Garrett never makes anyone uncomfortable, even if they ask a silly question.
“She is one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever known in my life and she has a way of making people feel comfortable,” said Morrison. “She just has a way about her.”
Usually, individuals who come through the pantry doors are at a stage in their lives when they are desperate for help. But, asking for help can be extremely daunting. Garrett tries to alleviate their anxiety by making phone calls with them to community initiatives and meeting privately with them.
“I don’t want people to be able to tell who’s a client and who’s a volunteer; I want there to be invisible barriers,” said Garrett. “I want people to be treated like human beings with compassion.”
Most of the people who have benefited from the pantry have returned to give back to the community in whatever small ways they can. Jim Thomas is one of them. He now volunteers at Warner Connects as a way of giving back.
Every time Thomas leaves the space knowing that he volunteered at an initiative that does so many things for those in need with everything from providing staples to resource information, he feels good.
“If there was no Lori, there’d be no pantry. Period,” Thomas remarked of his experience working in the pantry with Garrett.
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